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Monday, August 22, 2016

Dark Star - an Update

Last week Gold Standard Ventures released some new assay results from Dark Star (link), and by some fluke I managed to be correct with my predicted grades for hole 16-03B. Here is a plan map with the new results.

New results highlighted

The Good - Drill-hole 16-03B - intersected 101.2m @ 1.5 g/t Au.

The results from 16-03B came in very close to what was predicted (I was lucky), and extends Au mineralization to the south by ~100 m. We have a high grade core (32.3m @ 2.87 g/t Au) surrounded by low grade mineralization (~0.8 g/t Au). This is OK, and is similar to what we have seen from the drilling at the other deposits.

Nice assays and not too deep.

Here is a long section down the axis of the deposit.

We can see that the gold grades are gradually dropping off from the high grade core (hole 16-08) out into a medium to low grade halo, and some narrow zones of gold occuring along the Dark Star fault.

but...

The Bad - Hole 16-01 was a disaster!

Oh dear, Hole 16-01 was a disaster, all it hit was a few narrow, low grade zones. It was drilled just 60m from hole DS15-10 (149.4m at 1.38 g/t Au (link) and I was hoping that we would see something similar to the main Dark Star deposit, a gradual decrease in grade. In reality we have done from lots of gold to zero, nada, zilch!

This is what I had before:

Yeah, gold going on forever!

and now....

ohh, crap, that wasn't meant to happen!

Where did all the gold go?

It is amazing what a single hole can do! If hole 16-01 is correct, then it appears to show the gold is restricted to a narrow corridor (~150m wide) running from hole 15-10 to 16-03B (and a bit beyond).

GSV will need to drill some holes to the west of 16-08 and 16-03B to make sure that the results from drill-hole 16-01 were a fluke. If not, it means that North Dark Star is very small, and if DS16-022 and 023 don;t hit anything good, then the party is over!

This is my very generous gold grade shells.

What I would like to see Gold Standard do is:

Drill a couple of holes to the west of holes 16-03B and 08 to hopefully show that the results from hole 16-01 was a fluke (see map above).

More holes between 03B and DS16-06, 08 and 22 as you have a 200m x 200m zone with a couple of vertical holes that may miss the high grade zone.

More angle core holes! Stop with the vertical RC holes. I know they are quick and cheap, but you want as much, high quality data as you can get.

I've put the new results into my model to see what is going on (link). You you can have a look at the results.